Smart students and phones, petty partisan beefs

Hats off to the student journalists at the Ohio State University Lantern for making the right call on continued reporting of contentious public protests. They’ve endured pepper spray from police who disregarded their status as working journalists as well as protesters’ pleas not to identify those involved in public demonstrations. These lessons will serve them for a lifetime.

A two-year partisan standoff over whether and how the Franklin County Board of Elections should educate local voters on polling protocol is finally over. First Republicans on the elections board and then the all-democrat Franklin County commissioners balked, with the resolution barely beating the clock. Voter outreach efforts finally agreed to by Commissioners John O’grady and Marilyn Brown will come just as voter registration for the Nov. 3 general election ends next Monday and early voting begins Oct. 6.

Regardless of whose signs are swiped, it is never OK in the USA for anyone to take down political signs properly posted on someone’s personal property. The report last week of a Marysville police officer’s son allegedly bragging on social media about stealing Joe Biden signs makes the behavior even more repugnant. The impact intended just might backfire, though, with indications it primarily served to fire up Democrats.

We call it a win-win-win for Columbus Public Health to be working with Denison University and other local colleges via internships that expand students’ view of career options, which is win No. 1. Wins 2 and 3 are the health department gets smart new input and the community benefits from the interns’ and their professors’ work, such as exploring racism in public health.

We probably didn’t need a study of 495 Portuguese young adults to confirm that “nomophobia” is a real thing — you know, the anxiety that accompanies a missing or dead smart phone. But now we’d like to see Ana-paula Correia, an associate OSU professor, take her research to the next level: determining whether obsessive-compulsive behavior causes extra smartphone use or the other way around. Parents everywhere want to know.

Just when we got totally comfy working in our PJS, city governments across Ohio are increasingly uncomfortable about what Covid-19-induced work-at-home practices could be doing to their budgets. Pending efforts to undo a temporary law allowing cities to continue collecting income taxes from workers who don’t cross municipal boundaries for their jobs could create a $306 million annual loss for Ohio’s six biggest cities. The challenges are pending in two bills in the Ohio General Assembly and a Franklin County Common Pleas lawsuit.

Good for brothers Ray and Tim Tesner to have had the blessing to be able to work together in Ohiohealth operating rooms for 35 years, Ray as a sports-medicine orthopedic surgeon and Tim as a surgical technician. Even better that Tim, who grew up deaf, has had the opportunity to teach other physicians and medical staff members a bit of sign language to facilitate their OR work. When you’re good at what you do, showing trumps telling.